Find me on:

Read the Bible.

I was recently sent the NIrV Illustrated Holy Bible for Kids for free as a member of the Bible Gateway Blogger Grid. So far out of this Bible, I’ve only read a few stories out of Genesis with my family. My honest review is that it’s not my favorite children’s Bible, but it’ll do.

I’ll start with my main critique: the words are insanely small. Two of my kids are visually impaired, and there’s no way they could read from this Bible. Granted, this isn’t marketed as a large print Bible, so it may be unfair of me to hold it to that standard, but the text seems even smaller than those tiny pocket New Testaments. I’ve never really needed glasses to read before, but the tiny text in this Bible makes me want to grab my son’s bifocals just to see if they’ll help.

One more minor critique is that the NIrV doesn’t seem to fully commit to the paraphrase model. It’s not verse by verse, and yet still seems kind of wooden at times. I prefer verse by verse, honestly, but if I’m going to read a paraphrase, I think it should take full advantage of that kind of format, so that the stories read more like stories. The Message, for all its flaws, gets this right.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to the positives.

First, it’s illustrated well. The pictures are colorful, and there are lots of them. Just flipping through, it looks like almost every page has some kind of illustration, if not multiple illustrations. I’m sure small children will appreciate that.

Second, it’s the Bible. Seriously, this is a major positive! When it comes down to it, I don’t care what version of the Bible people read. Just pick one up and start reading it. It’s the gospel that saves, and the gospel is clear in every version of the Bible I’ve ever read.

But if you do decide to buy this one, you might consider buying a pair of bifocals at the same time.